Your Guide to Implement Best HR Policies

Human Resources policies are imperative because they help set expectations from the employees and create the preferred workplace culture. Some of the common HR policies are recruiting, compensation, performance evaluation, termination, benefits, employee grievances and leaves of absence.

They comprise rules on how employees must perform their tasks and communicate with each other. Typically, it is the duty of an HR manager to implement best HR policies to minimize the risk of corporate liability or employee lawsuits. The aim of the HR policies is to address matters crucial to the company mission, ensuring high operational efficiency. Then again, HR policies guard employees from arbitrary and discriminatory actions by management. Employees should be allowed to know the policies in case of conflict or disagreement.

Whether you're operating a business with 25 employees or 250 employees, implementing best HR policies will reduce the complexity of workforce management in your company. Ensure you have received all the executive and legal approvals before implementing the policies throughout your company. You may have different sets of HR policies for different groups of employees. These policies should be approved by your senior management for implementation.

Don't execute the procedures all of a sudden. If you know that your company is reluctant to the changes and procedures, you then should identify the employee perception about your company and give your top management a clear picture about the improvements that can be done for the company to get good results in future.

• You should set clear behavioral standards in the form of rules that establishes a framework for identifying and addressing violations of those standards. Establishing the framework is an important portion of the work needed to implement HR policies.

• Within the framework, start creating policies for your workplace that are an ideal for the company's size and the structure's level.
• Distribute your policy documents via email, or make them available on your company's website. Help your employees find the policies to review them. Update the documents on a regular basis.

• Put policy training in the induction programs so that new people will know what is expected of them.
• Conduct frequent and small group meetings to review the policies with employees, allowing them to ask questions. Mention policies like Internet usage, email communication and mobile usage. Likewise, modifications to health insurance eligibility or other employee benefits should also be discussed. Also conduct a follow-up testing to ensure employees understand the policies.
• Give your employees a system to acknowledge receipt of the policies.

To implement and track all the policies in the traditional way can be tedious, time-consuming, posing a lot of chaos and severe headache for an HR head. In the digital era, a lot of HR software systems are available which are helping companies save a lot of time and focus more on what matters the most in their business. Pick up the right HR software system that helps you meet the exact needs.